Rowing woman

Kompong Phluk is a ‘floating’ village built on stilts, and tourists can pay to be taken around on a boat ride through the place. I was not a huge fan of the experience; the village certainly does not seem to reap any benefits of the money paid by visitors. Anyway, here is a photograph of a local woman rowing about going about her chores nonchalantly. 🙂

This picture was kinda blurred, but I didn’t want to throw it away — I really love the half-turned torso of the subject. To make the photograph usable, I decided to make the background monochrome and apply a selective blur, and highlight the woman and her boat in the foreground. However, the varied blurriness required of the elements made my first attempt look weird and unnatural. So I started working with the boat and the woman separately. Frankly, I’ve forgotten the myriad effects I played around with. I remember going crazy with the Colors tool for the boat, and using edge detection and softening and various blend modes and transparencies for the layers. The final changes I made were smudging, shading and healing the subject to make her blend in with the background.